I read The Soul of A New Machine, but in a Reader’s Digest condensed version, back in the day. I should really pick up a copy and read the real book.
(For those who may not know, Soul did win a Pulitzer.)
Obit watch: March 25, 2026.
March 25th, 2026Obit watch: March 24, 2026.
March 24th, 2026For the record: NYT obits for Valerie Perrine and Brian Doherty.
Burning in Hell watch: Kermit Gosnell. I have my own opinions about abortion, which I’m not going to impose on anyone here. But the Gosnell case, as I recall, made even people who were pro-abortion sit up and say, “Hey, wait a minute, this is going too far.”
Obit watch: March 23, 2026.
March 23rd, 2026Valerie Perrine, actress. Other credits include “Homicide: Life on the Street”, “Walker, Texas Ranger”, and “W.C. Fields and Me”.
For the historical record: Robert S. Mueller III. WP.
Obit watch: March 20, 2026.
March 20th, 2026Chuck Norris. THR. “The World Bows: Remembering Chuck Norris 1940-2026” from Black Belt.
Other credits include the bad “Hawaii Five-0”, “Sons of Thunder”, and “Firewalker“.
Ed Bernard, actor. Other credits include “Hardcastle and McCormick”, “Shaft” (the movie), “Cool Million”…
…and “Mannix”. (“A Question of Murder”, season 7, episode 22. He was “Bull Evans”.)
Jane Lapotaire, British actress.
For the historical record: NYT obit for Alvin Greene. (Previously on WCD.)
Peeves petted. Axes ground.
March 18th, 2026This is not a shot at Dr. Christopher A. Sims. I never met the man. For all I know, he helped old ladies across the street, nursed sick puppies, and fed feral cats.
But:
Christopher A. Sims, 83, Dies; Won Nobel on Ways to Steer the Economy
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As the NYT acknowledges in paragraph four of the obit, the prize is the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. This prize was created in 1968, 72 years after Alfred Nobel’s death. It is not a Nobel prize, and it is wrong and misleading to state that it is one. The only real Nobel prizes are in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace.
Yes, I know this is a small thing. But it is one of my pet peeves.
Vatican Justice!
March 17th, 2026Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu, former chief of staff to Pope Francis, was convicted by the Vatican’s criminal court in 2023 of various financial crimes.
Today, his conviction was overturned on appeal.
The NYT article is mostly bullet points:
Most charges related to a London real estate deal that cost the Vatican millions of euros.
In a 16-page ruling, the appeals court said that Vatican prosecutors committed procedural errors that warranted a new trial.
The court ruled that the prosecutors had unfairly withheld evidence.
One of Pope Francis’s secret law changes let prosecutors act without judicial oversight. The appeals court said the defendants should have known of the change.
The NYPost also has a story that is less bullet-pointy and more sensational.
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The case had as its main focus the Vatican’s investment of $413 million in a London property. Prosecutors alleged brokers and Vatican monsignors fleeced the Holy See of tens of millions of dollars in fees and commissions to acquire the property, and then extorted the Holy See for $16.5 million to cede control of it.
The original investigation spawned two main tangents involving Becciu, once a leading Vatican cardinal and future papal contender. He was convicted of embezzlement and sentenced to 5½ years in prison. The tribunal convicted eight other defendants of embezzlement, abuse of office, fraud and other charges and imposed tens of millions of dollars in restitution to the Holy See.
This whole thing seems kind of crazy. And I’m looking forward to the true crime book.
By the way: Catholic Answers explains papal infallibility for you.
Obit watch: March 17, 2026.
March 17th, 2026Len Deighton, one of the great British spy writers. NYT (share link). He was 97.
He wrote “The IPCRESS File” to amuse himself during a vacation. The story of a secret agent confronted with duplicity and bureaucracy from his own side while investigating a Soviet kidnap ring, it was published in 1962 and went on to sell millions of copies.
The novel was adapted into a 1965 film, with Caine in a star-making performance as Deighton’s protagonist, a sardonic working-class sophisticate with a love of gourmet food. The character is unnamed in the book, though Caine’s character was given the name Harry Palmer.
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Judy Pace, actress. Other credits include “Cotton Comes to Harlem”, “O’Hara, U.S. Treasury”, “Shaft” (the TV series), and “The Thomas Crown Affair” (the original).
Matt Clark, actor. Other credits include “Hardcastle and McCormick”, “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension”, “The Laughing Policeman”, and “T.H.E. Cat”.
John Bengtson. No, you probably haven’t heard of him, unless you have a lot in common with the Saturday Night Movie Group.
For more than 30 years, he captured images of them from silent films and then matched them with archival photos, aerial maps and postcards to pinpoint where Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd performed their slapstick shenanigans.
In identifying hundreds of locations in Hollywood, San Francisco and New York that those geniuses of silent comedy used in movies like “The Kid” (1921), “Cops” (1922) and “Safety Last!” (1923), Mr. Bengtson inadvertently uncovered a visual record of vanished cityscapes.
“When you watch a silent movie,” he said, “you’re not only being entertained by the story, but you’re experiencing time travel.”
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His most remarkable revelation centered on a T-shaped alley in Hollywood, between Cahuenga Boulevard and Cosmo Street. Triangulating frame-by-frame stills with his go-to research materials, Mr. Bengtson discovered that the alley had been used in more than a dozen films in the early 1920s, including Keaton’s “Cops,” Chaplin’s “The Kid” and Lloyd’s “Safety Last!”
The location’s ubiquity made sense to Mr. Bengtson. At the time, Hollywood was mostly a neighborhood of open fields and vacant lots. Because the alley was close to the filmmakers’ studios, they could go there for quick urban shots instead of lugging their equipment to downtown Los Angeles.
“I can absolutely guarantee you that there is no place anywhere that has three of the biggest stars and three of their most important movies in one spot,” Mr. Bengtson told Atlas Obscura, a travel website, in 2021, the year a commemorative plaque he advocated for was placed at the alley. “This is absolutely two or three strata above anything else I’ve ever found.”
He did three books: Silent Echoes: Discovering Early Hollywood Through the Films of Buster Keaton, Silent Visions: Discovering Early Hollywood and New York Through the Films of Harold Lloyd, and Silent Traces: Discovering Early Hollywood Through the Films of Charlie Chaplin.
I burned a share link on this because I’d like for folks to look at the header of the NYT obit, which partially reproduces an extra on the Criterion Collection disc, showing how they did the clock stunt in Harold Lloyd’s “Safety Last!”. Mr. Bengtson sounds like a really cool guy who it would have been a pleasure to know. ALS got him at 68.
Obit watch: March 16, 2026.
March 16th, 2026Brian Doherty, writer for Reason magazine and author. Reason describes him as “the leading historian of the libertarian movement”.
He was 57, and died as the result of a fall.
Paul R. Ehrlich, of The Population Bomb fame. McThag.
As a young professor of biology at Stanford University in the mid-1960s, Dr. Ehrlich was known for his absorbing lectures on evolution, in which he described what plants and animals faced on a planet stressed by industrial pollution and rapid population growth. He distilled those lectures into an article published in December 1967 in New Scientist magazine.
Six months later, encouraged by David Brower, the executive director of the environmental group the Sierra Club, to write a book on the subject, Dr. Ehrlich published “The Population Bomb.” In 233 pages, he asserted that the planet’s condition began to deteriorate rapidly in the 1950s, when the rate of population growth exceeded the increase in food production — or, as he put it, when “the stork passed the plow.” He called on couples to limit their families to one or two children.
…
Such bold predictions, some of which turned out to be premature or in error, prompted rivals in business and academia to question the validity of his claims. In 1980, Julian Simon, an economist at the University of Maryland, challenged Dr. Ehrlich and two of his colleagues with what Stewart Brand, a founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, called “one of the great revelatory bets.”
Convinced that the growing population would make natural resources ever more scarce and thus drive up costs, Dr. Ehrlich accepted Mr. Simon’s challenge, betting that the prices of five key metals would rise in the 1980s. Mr. Simon believed that innovation would drive prices down.
In 1990, Dr. Ehrlich and his colleagues conceded defeat and sent Mr. Simon a check for $576.07 — an amount that represented the decline in the metals’ prices after accounting for inflation.
For the record: NYT obit for Dan Simmons.
Companies to avoid: Palmetto State Armory.
March 16th, 2026I have been trying since Friday to order one of these from PSA:
Screenshot
First of all, when I try to log into the PSA website with my account, it makes me complete a CAPTCHA. Which wouldn’t be so bad, except that there seems to be something broken with PSA’s CAPTCHA process. Sometimes it will go through the first or second attempt, sometimes it takes a dozen or more “click on all the squares that contain X” attempts before it finally goes through. Then, since I have two factor authentication enabled, once I get the PIN, I have to go through the entire CAPTCHA process again.
Once I am finally logged in, and go through the checkout process, when it asks me to select a FFL, I do not get any option to upload a copy of my C&R license. Yes, I do have one, and (as you can see in the screen shot above) PSA claims this is C&R eligible.
I’ve used the online help system three times. The first two times, the online help team told me they would escalate this internally to the “discount code” team, and that I should hear from that team directly. That was Friday, and they said I wouldn’t have to wait until today. I’ve heard nothing. The third chat agent I used today just kept going around in circles telling me to call their customer service number. They did tell me to try a different browser, or try incognito mode: when I told them I’d tried four different browsers on two different computers, it was back to the endless cycle of “call our customer service number”.
I called the customer service number. The person who answered the phone was singularly unhelpful, telling me I needed to upload my FFL to the “compliance department”. The link for that is difficult to find, but I did manage to find it and uploaded it on Friday, before I spoke to customer service. When I told the customer service rep I had already uploaded it, she told me a) I have to wait for them to “process” it, and II) I had to specify, when I uploaded it, what items I wanted to purchase. Curiously, that’s not stated on the upload form. I asked how long it takes to process it, and the customer service rep refused to answer that question. If that person is to be believed, PSA won’t let you upload a copy of your C&R FFL to have on file in your account. When I asked about the supposed escalation to the “discount code” team, I got no reply that addressed that claim.
This is a real shame. My Makarov owning friend tells me, at that price, PSA is virtually giving them away. But that price becomes much less attractive if I have to pay FFL transfer fees on top of PSA’s shipping, shipping protection, and tax. At this point, I’m tired and I’m fed up with chasing after Palmetto State Armory to give them my money.
This is the second time I’ve tried to order something from PSA. The first time, I tried to order some 5.7 ammo they had on sale: that order was cancelled for no apparent reason.
I don’t plan to try to do business with Palmetto State Armory again. I also don’t feel like I can encourage any of my readers to do business with Palmetto State Armory.
I haven’t been treated with this much contempt since Cheaper than Dirt had a retail store in Round Rock.
Firings watch.
March 13th, 2026In a little bit of haste:
Dr. Kevin Granger fired as athletic director of Texas Southern University. Also, they took down his jersey. (He was a former basketball player for the school, and they had retired his number.)
Wes Miller out as basketball coach of Cincinnati, per “sources”. Five seasons:
18-15 this season as well.
Kim English out as head basketball coach of Providence.
English compiled an overall record of 48-52 and 23-37 in Big East play.
15-18 this season.
Random gun crankery.
March 13th, 2026I feel like I am unobservant. Especially since I own stock in Ruger.
But I did not know, until today, that Beretta was making a hostile takeover bid for Ruger. I think this might be great for my stock price, but I would very much regret seeing another independent gun maker become part of a larger conglomerate. On the gripping hand, there are probably worse companies that could buy Ruger…
Speaking of stock:
And speaking of S&W, I got a press release today: Lena Miculek has returned to Smith and Wesson as their newest “ambassador”. I find this interesting, as she was previously with Sig Sauer, and was the front person for their ROSE program. I did know that she had left Sig a few months ago, so I guess this is the proverbial other shoe dropping.
This came across a mailing list I’m on, and I wanted to bookmark it: I may need this at some point in the not-too-distant future.
I will say that this falls more into the “relationship advice” category than “gun crankery”, but it seems sound to me.
Firings watch.
March 12th, 2026I think the NCAA men’s basketball tournament bracket is going to be announced this weekend. I don’t really care, except Gonzaga! (Because it is fun to say “Gonzaga!”)
But with the end of the regular season, comes the firings.
Bobby Hurley out as head coach of Arizona State.
But:
Hurley led the Sun Devils to the NCAA tournament three times, including two straight in 2018 and 2019, but he needed to make another March Madness run if his contract was going to be extended.
Arizona State fell well short, finishing 12th out of 16 teams in the Big 12 at 7-11 and 17-16 overall following the 91-42 loss to Iowa State in Kansas City – the most lopsided game in Big 12 history.
Obit watch: March 10, 2026.
March 10th, 2026Mr. Gritz served four tours in Vietnam as a Green Beret, during which he led a roving contingent of mostly Cambodian guerrillas deep behind enemy lines. He received more than 60 medals and commendations for his service.
But former comrades and journalists later raised questions about his record. In some cases, they said, his awards had come at his own recommendation.
In Mr. Gritz’s telling, he retired from the U.S. Army in 1978 at the request of a Pentagon intelligence official, who wanted him to develop a clandestine program to locate U.S. prisoners of war still alive in Southeast Asia. (It is unclear whether such a request was ever made.)
Just five years before, North Vietnam had released its remaining 591 American prisoners. But it became a matter of truth to some veterans, including Mr. Gritz, that hundreds had been left behind, primarily in Laos.
In 1981, Mr. Gritz put out a call for Special Forces veterans for a private rescue mission. They trained at a cheerleading camp in Central Florida. For guidance, he hired a psychic. Unsurprisingly, the plan fell apart after the volunteers soured on it.
A year later, thanks to money from the actors Clint Eastwood and William Shatner, Mr. Gritz and a small band of American civilians crossed from Thailand into Laos with a team of Lao guerrillas. A few days in, Laotian government forces attacked, killing two guerrillas and capturing an American.
Mr. Gritz returned to Thailand, paid a ransom to free the man and turned himself in to the Thai authorities. He and his accomplices were convicted of a long list of crimes, but were let go on the promise that they would not return.
He went on to become a survivalist, a presidential candidate on the Populist Party ticket, and “one of the best-known figures on the radical right”. He negotiated Randy Weaver’s surrender.
Alexander Butterfield. He was the guy who revealed to Congress Nixon’s secret taping system.
Mr. Butterfield had been in charge of White House security but had not been a member of Nixon’s inner circle and did not appear to be a major witness. But under questioning by Senator Fred D. Thompson, a Tennessee Republican who was chief minority counsel to the Watergate committee, Mr. Butterfield dropped a bombshell.
Q. Mr. Butterfield, are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the president?
A. I was aware of listening devices, yes, sir.
Under the folksy prodding of Mr. Thompson and of Senator Sam J. Ervin Jr., a North Carolina Democrat who was the panel chairman, and Samuel Dash, the committee’s chief counsel, it all tumbled out — the story of a secret, sophisticated recording system that the president himself had authorized and that for more than two years had picked up virtually all of Nixon’s meetings and telephone conversations.
Monti Rock III. I’d never heard of him, either, but he was a frequent Carson guest, and this is one of the more entertaining obits I’ve read in a while.
It also gives me hope.
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He indeed fronted Disco-Tex and His Sex-O-Lettes, at the invitation of the songwriter and producer Bob Crewe. The group had a pair of hits, “Get Dancin’” in 1974 and “I Wanna Dance Wit’ Choo (Doo Dat Dance)” in 1975. Both reached the top 25 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart.
Mr. Rock, shouting the lyrics over the singing of four female Sex-O-Lettes, took that tongue-in-cheek act on the road. Not everyone got the joke.
“Not only does Monti Rock III have no discernible talent whatsoever,” an entertainment writer for The Fort Lauderdale News wrote in a 1975 review, “he also has a filthy mouth.”
So a guy who had no discernible talent had two Billboard top 25 singles? Like I said, this gives me hope. And remember, this was before auto tune.
Bagatelle (#143)
March 10th, 2026
Obit watch: March 9, 2026.
March 9th, 2026Country Joe McDonald, of Country Joe McDonald and the Fish.
The YouTube link doesn’t seem to work in the archived version, so here it is, for the hysterical record:
It has been a bad time for screenwriters.
Alan Trustman. Other credits include “They Call Me Mister Tibbs!”, “Hit!”, and “Lady Ice”. The NYT obit makes it sound like his career pretty much came to a screeching halt after he and Steve McQueen got into it while writing “Le Mans”.
Jeremy Larner. I wasn’t originally going to note this, but his arc is mildly interesting.
He has a total of four credits in IMDB. Two of those are as “Self”. The other one is for “Drive, He Said”, which he wrote (and which was based on his novel) and which you can find in the “America Lost and Found: The BBS Story” box set from Criterion.
I intended to note this the other day, but it got past me: Bruce Froemming, major leage umpire.
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Umpires are known for their accuracy — or lack thereof — in calling balls, strikes and outs, as well as for their on-field disputes and occasional ejections. Froemming gave the heave-ho to players, managers and coaches 125 times from 1971 to 2007, far fewer than Klem’s record of close to 300 ejections. Three managers were each thrown out by Froemming three times: Davey Johnson of the Mets, Bobby Cox of the Atlanta Braves and Joe Torre, once with the St. Louis Cardinals and twice when he skippered the Mets.
Froemming booted out his last man, Tampa Bay Rays manager Joe Maddon, in the waning days of his last season, in 2007, for arguing a check swing call.
He also booted Billy Martin (though, as far as I can tell, there was no fistfight involved).
In 1976, Froemming ejected the fiery Yankees manager Billy Martin in the ninth inning of Game 4 of the World Series for tossing a ball at Bill Deegan, the home plate umpire, from the dugout. Martin, claiming that Deegan had tossed three balls out of play in his direction, rushed onto the field to argue his ejection.
“It’s a touchy situation,” Froemming said afterward, “and to have Martin start something at this point is something we can’t tolerate.”
Jennifer Runyon, actress. Other credits include “Carnosaur”, “The Falcon and the Snowman”, and “The Master”.
Lawrence sent over a NotTheBee obit for Alvin Greene, “the most bizarre Senate candidate in United States history”.